MOONCRESTRECORDSIndependent label: Mooncrest Records was a joint venture
between Charisma and B&C, Mooncrest was headed by Lee Gopthal and Tony
Stratton-Smith and was intended as a 'quality Pop' label to complement those
companies' Contemporary and Reggae catalogues. Its arrival led to the
abandonment of the Peg and B&C labels, the most successful albums on Peg -
notably by Nazareth and Steeleye Span - being reissued immediately on
Mooncrest. Biggest sellers on the new label were the aforementioned
Nazareth, who took its first single, 'Broken Down Angel' (MOON-1; 1973) into the
Top 10 and followed it up with four more hits. The Hotshots had a Top 5
hit in 1973 with 'Snoopy vs. The Red Baron' (MOON-5), but other than that,
singles successes proved elusive. The collapse of B&C in the middle of
1975 led to Mooncrest running into the buffers temporarily. Along with its
sister-label Trojan it was sold to Marcel Rodd and became part of his Saga
Records, stable, but after only five more singles it was shelved again. It
was revived again in 1986 and is today enjoying a new lease of life as a
constituent of the Sanctuary group. The first two singles initially had a
special sleeve and silver printed credits but for later pressings and the
remaining issues the silver was replaced by black, presumably for the sake of
legibility. For at least some time in the '70s Mooncrest singles came in a
plain navy-blue sleeve. As was the case with those of its stablemate
Charisma, Mooncrest demos had the 'A' side on both sides; which is is unusual in
Britain. Numbering was in the MOON-0s during the '70s; singles with
MOON-1000 numbers date from 1986 onwards, as do any company sleeves with
Mooncrest's name on them. Manufacture was by EMI until the B&C crash;
the release of MOON-50 by the Magnificent Mercury Brothers and MOON-51 by the
Fortunes appears to have been cancelled as a result of B&C's problems.
When Mooncrest was revived by its new owners those numbers were reused for
different singles. Saga owned a couple of pressing plants, so it seems
reasonable to guess that after taking control of Mooncrest they pressed its
records themselves. There was no change in the label design under Saga,
but the credits migrated and solid centres became the norm. After the
first two Saga releases the artist credit returned to its old place at the foot
of the label. Distributed By TS Records. Thanks to Robert Lyons For
The Info.